Chapter Text
Peter Parker had read interviews with people who were unknowns and then got pulled into the acting business alongside huge names, had read the way they described the jarring intersections between normalcy and celebrity. Like, you walk out of your trailer having just called your mom and there's Cate Blanchett eating pizza, and she waves to you, and you're like oh my god, what?? And that never really goes away.
He'd always thought it was kind of bullshit. Like, sure, the first few months hanging out with the Avengers had been weird, but now he was pretty used to it. They were all just people, at the end of the day, even if some of them were robots, or blue and furry, or actual gods.
Except that Johnny Storm—who he'd spent more time with than any of the Avengers—was leaning on the wall outside his apartment, sunglasses pushed up into his windswept hair, and there was still, just for a moment, a feeling in his stomach like when he hit the nadir of a swing and started being pulled upward again. "Oh my god," he said. "What."
Johnny checked the hall around him, as if Peter's neighbors wouldn't all be glued to their peepholes trying to determine why he was here. Which Peter would also like to know, actually.
"Mind if I come in?" Johnny asked, pushing past him before Peter could answer, and Peter barely remembered to let him, putting up a split second's instinctive resistance before letting himself be knocked aside. He closed the door.
"What are you doing here?" He asked, as Johnny looked around, taking in the honestly pretty disastrous state of Peter's kitchen. His suit was in a pile of laundry in his bedroom—he'd been too beat last night to try and eat anything, thank god, or he may well have left his mask absently somewhere and then where would he be?—so unless things got really weird he was safe on that front. Just the humiliation, then, of having super-famous, super-beautiful, super-rich Johnny judge his tower of Chinese takeout cartons.
"Trust me," said Johnny, "I'd prefer not to be." He sighed. "I got this with my mail yesterday."
He canted a hip against the edge of Peter's kitchen table and fished something out of—somewhere. His ridiculously expensive white-and-gold leather jacket didn't appear to have any pockets, and his jeans were painted on. Unstable molecules must be nice as hell, Peter thought, not for the first time. No need to stash backpacks all around the city with hoodies and clean socks.
He wanted to make the observation aloud, but resisted. Peter Parker didn't know shit about unstable molecules, or for that matter about Spider-Man’s socks.
Johnny held the thing out to Peter, who took it.
It was an oversized card, longer than a standard playing card, and painted beautifully. "It's a skull," he said, then frowned, looking up at Johnny. "A death threat?"
Johnny rolled his eyes. "It's a tarot card," he explained. "God, do you hang out with anyone who isn't straight?"
Peter raised his eyebrows at him, and then kind of regretted it. Johnny’s, uh, affairs with men were barely rumors compared to his big splashy breakups with women, and probably he would think Peter was the kind to fall for tabloid bullshit when actually he was just remembering that time Johnny rambled to him for two hours on a rooftop about how he’d missed his chance to make out with Matt Bomer at a party.
Johnny stared back, then fidgeted, coughed into his fist. "Doesn’t count," he muttered, "I mean, like, witchy astrology gays. Also, I'm not sure I'd say we hang out." His nose wrinkled like he found the concept distasteful.
They did—not just in the way Johnny didn't know about, sitting side by side in the afterglow of daring heroics with muscles singing and weary, staring at the city skyline that they'd both claimed as theirs and razzing each other about the disgusting things they put on their hotdogs—but also as civilians, as Peter Parker and Johnny Storm. Not often, sure, but he could remember at least a half-dozen stupid rich-person cocktail gatherings where Peter Parker, celebrity photographer, had found himself and then, subsequently, found Johnny, and at least three where they'd ended up drinking together as things wound down, or at least Johnny would drink and Peter would pretend while keeping an eye on whatever else he was there to keep an eye on.
But it was very possible Johnny interpreted that as weird hovering or networking or something other than Peter just liking his company much more than anyone else who attended that kind of shindig.
“Which brings me back to my first question,” he said. “Why are you here? Why bring this to me?”
Johnny crossed his arms. “Flip it over.”
Peter did, and stared. On the other side of the card, where the bicycle pattern or whatever would be on a playing card, was a large, stylized spider, in muted blue and red ink.
For a moment he felt like he'd been dipped in the Hudson in midwinter, and then Johnny said, “Don't worry, I don't think he's involved in—whatever this is. I just want to talk.”
Peter looked up at him. He looked tired, the spark a little faded from his blue eyes. Spider-Man could have asked him if he were okay, and why this was bothering him so much, pressed him for details, get to work immediately to see who the hell was using his imagery to freak out one of his best friends. Spider-Man probably could have given him a hug.
Peter said: “He's not exactly at my beck and call.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” Johnny muttered, glancing away as if there was suddenly something fascinating about Peter’s kitchen wall, and Peter had no time to do anything but blink about the thread of bitterness in his voice before he continued, straightening, “I tried to contact him my way but didn't have any luck, and I think—” he bit his lip. “I think it might be kind of urgent.”
Peter imagined that, imagined Johnny blazing a message across the sky and then lingering alone and answerless because Peter was sleeping off a few measly blows to the head. “I'll do what I can,” he promised, holding out the card, and then took it back. “Actually do you mind if I keep this?”
Johnny blinked at him. “Why?”
“I’d like to do some tests,” he said, “science nerd, remember, had that short-lived internship with your brother-in-law? Anyway I figure I might save Spidey some time.” He ran a hand through his hair, watching Johnny hesitate. It was surprisingly hard, seeing him slow to trust. “I’ll give it back to him when I see him, he can return it to you when you meet up.”
Johnny’s eyebrows crinkled, just a little, like he was trying to figure Peter out. Shit. Had ‘Spidey’ been too familiar? Did he call himself ‘Spidey?’ It’d been too long since he’d had to do this stupid identity thing with someone who knew him this well.
“Thank you,” Johnny said at last. “You don’t have to do this. I appreciate it.”
Peter raised a shoulder in a shrug. “Any friend of Spider-Man’s is a friend of mine.”
Johnny stared at him for a moment longer, and then sort of shook himself. “Right,” he said, “Anyway. I should go.”
“Yeah,” said Peter. “Okay.”
Johnny started to let himself out, and belatedly Peter blurted, “where should I tell him to meet you?”
Johnny waved a hand. “The usual place. He’ll know what that means. I’m just gonna—go there now, I guess, but obviously I get if it’ll take some time for you to—whatever, he can find me. He usually knows how to find me.”
It was unlike him to be so unsure, to not finish his sentences. Peter sucked at the inside of his cheek. “Right,” he said, “yeah.”
Johnny stopped in his doorway. “By the way, Parker?”
Peter—primed for his sigh of relief—straightened back up as he turned. “Uh, yeah?”
Johnny flashed him a wicked, over-the-shoulder grin. “Nice legs.”
The door clicked as Peter stared down at himself, at his grubby, faded t-shirt and bare feet and distinct lack of pants. His boxers were black, thank god, since it had been about a hundred years since he’d done any laundry, but, fuck, no wonder Johnny had been so insistent they didn’t hang out, he’d descended into Peter’s wretched hive and probably regretted every single moment they’d ever spoken to each other.
He ran a hand over his face. “How am I ever supposed to show my face in front of him again?” he asked no one, dramatically. “Oh, right, I don't usually have to.”
Really, he told himself, it was Johnny’s own fault for waking a man up at the indecent hour of 7pm.
He did do some tests, mostly making sure there weren’t any slow-acting poisons or hidden tracking devices sewn into the paper, but didn’t spend more than a few hours on it. Johnny was right. This warning, if that's even what it was, wasn’t from his scientific (straight, his brain filled in in Johnny’s mocking tone) world, and he'd have to consult with someone outside of it if he wanted to show up to meet him with any new information.
He met Julia Carpenter at a 24-hour diner on 58th and 9th. She was sitting in the back, a half-empty milkshake at her elbow, and she didn’t react when Spider-Man quietly folded himself into the booth across from her.
“Madam Web,” he greeted her, though he was sure she already knew he was there. They’d never really spent much time together, and it was still weird to try and map that name onto her face in a diner rather than onto the cryptic old woman on a spider-web throne he was used to.
“Spider-Man,” she said, inclining her head. She’d changed her hair since last he saw her, or maybe he was just used to the black and white mask and not the dark glasses.
He watched a waiter grab a menu for him, actually look at who he was, roll his eyes, and put it back. He caught his eye and waved him over. “Can I get a burger and fries, please? Medium rare, no onion.”
The waiter nodded and wandered away. Peter sat back. “Not that I mind the swing through Times Square,” he said, “but I thought you were more of a lower Manhattan girl.”
Julia propped her head on her hand. “I am,” she said. “But you’re not my first appointment tonight, and since I was in the neighborhood, I thought I’d kill two red birds with one stone.”
Peter raised his eyebrows at her, not that she could see it. “That explains the milkshake, and how blase everyone is being about me being here.” He cocked his head, curious. “What’d Hell’s Kitchen’s personal savior want from you?”
Julia twirled the straw in her milkshake. “We meet up periodically to bond over being the bad literary trope of going blind and getting supernatural powers in exchange.”
Peter blinked at her. “You—you're joking? That’s a joke.”
“Yes,” she said, “that’s a joke.”
They sat in silence for a minute, and then Peter reached over to unzip his backpack. “Uh. So the reason that I wanted to talk to you—”
“You got a card,” Julia said, cutting him off.
Peter stopped. “No,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “I didn’t, technically. It wasn’t delivered to me.” He pulled it out slowly, watching her. “You haven’t capital-S Seen this, or you would know that. So how did you know about it at all?”
Julia leaned down and pulled something out of her purse. “It was a guess,” she said, “since earlier today I got this.”
She slid it across the table to Peter. It was a second card, this one depicting an androgynous figure dressed in harlequin-style motley, their dancing steps taking them right up to the sheer edge of a cliff.
“Huh,” Peter said. “I didn't know you still did stuff like guess.”
“All the time,” Julia muttered.
Peter flipped the card over. The back was the same as the other, a stylized, red-and-blue spider as if stolen right off his chest. “Huh,” he said again. He ran a hand over his head. “You know, if you got one—” his burger arrived, and he paused, raising a hand in thanks to the waiter, and then resumed, voice lower, “if you have one, maybe this is a bigger thing than I thought.” He peeled off his gloves and lifted his mask enough to eat. “Did Daredevil get one? Is that why he was here?”
Julia shook her head. “Unrelated. And it’s not a bigger thing. I got one because I’m supposed to give it to you.”
Peter—shoving half his burger in his mouth in one go—made an inquiring noise.
“No, that’s not a guess.” She took a sip of her milkshake. “Trust me, you want to take it.”
Peter chewed, swallowed, sighed. “I guess you can’t tell me why.”
“I could,” said Julia. She tucked her hair behind her ear. “I always could. But it changes things.”
“For the worse, I’m guessing,” Peter said, watching her face.
“Depends. Worse for who? You? That’s,” she hesitated, “complicated to answer.”
Peter rolled his eyes, finishing his burger in smaller but very quick bites. God, when was the last time he’d eaten anything? He should start journaling, or something, just to have a record of his meals.
“For the Human Torch,” Julia said, and Peter’s attention snapped back to her, “definitely.”
Peter grabbed a napkin. “Right,” he said, cleaning the grease from his fingers and gathering up the two cards. “I guess I’ll be taking these, then.”
Julia folded her hands in front of her. “Don’t you want to know what it means?”
Peter paused.
Julia leaned forward and plucked the card she’d given him from his hand like she was cheating at Go Fish, holding it up so he could see the figure. “The Fool,” she said. “They’re like—the protagonist of the Tarot, or, conversely, maybe its subject. All the other cards—the minor and major arcana—are ways they feel about things, or things that happen to them, or people who they meets along the way who change them.” Her finger tapped the card, indicating the figure’s raised, bell-adorned foot, and the cliff beyond. “The Fool is the beginning of the personal journey. See? One more step takes them over the edge.”
“Huh,” said Peter. “Good thing Johnny can fly.”
Julia said nothing, just watching him.
He took the card back from her, popped a couple more fries in his mouth, and retrieved his wallet from his backpack—his patrol wallet, no ID, just whatever cash he’d managed to scrounge from his couch cushions. “Thank you,” he said, “for meeting me, and for the advice, and. You know.” He thumbed through his bills, counting, and winced apologetically. “I was gonna offer to get your milkshake in appreciation, but I’m a little short.”
She waved a hand in dismissal. “I’ll take the rest of your fries and call it even.”
“Thanks,” Peter said again, left his money tucked under the corner of his plate, and turned to go.
“Spider-Man,” Julia said, and he stopped, looking back at her while he pulled his gloves back on. She ran a hand up the cane propped against the table. “You’re gonna think it’s clones again,” she said. “It’s not clones.”
Peter had no idea what the hell that could mean. “Small blessings, I guess,” he said, and swung away.
+
“I’ve only ever had a tarot reading once,” said Johnny, leaning back on his elbows, the wind shifting through his hair.
Peter crouched next to him, looking at him sideways, waiting. Johnny had his legs dangling off the edge of Lady Liberty’s crown. He was still wearing his white leather jacket, but it was over his Fantastic Four uniform, and it made him look pale and washed out in the floodlights. The river hissed to itself far below them.
“Ben took me,” Johnny continued eventually, his voice shifting for a moment into a passable impression of Ben’s distinctive rumble “fer a laff. We went to this little place on the lower east side, above a basement Ethiopian restaurant. One of those places with the ‘PSYCHIC’ signs in the window. Palm readings. Whatever.” He jerked his chin at the card, lying on the rooftop between them. “Death,” he said, “was the last card she pulled, in the spot that talks about your future.”
“Geez,” Peter muttered. “Morbid. I thought these places were always supposed to give you good news so you give them more money.”
Johnny smiled, just a little, and took a breath. “The next day,” he said, “we left on the first test flight of Reed’s new experimental shuttle.”
Peter frowned. “What new—oh.” Suddenly a lot of things made sense. No wonder Johnny hadn’t been sleeping. “Oh.”
Johnny leaned over and picked up the card, then lay down on his back, holding it up against the sky. “It doesn’t mean death,” he said, “it means change. The kind of change that’s only happened to me and mine once in my whole life, and I’d kind of like to keep it that way.”
Peter shifted position, letting his legs dangle next to Johnny’s, thinking. “Maybe it’s not as big a deal this time,” he suggested. “Maybe you’re just going to lose your powers again for a bit. Or swap them around, like happened with you and Sue that one time.” He knocked a knuckle lightly on Johnny’s knee. “More invisible pranks, hey?”
Johnny shook his head. “It’s not about Sue this time, or the others.” He turned the card over and over in his hands. “I’m not convinced it’s even about me.”
“What do you mean?” Peter turned himself around, swinging his legs up and over Johnny so he could fold them under himself again, facing him.
Johnny held up the card, its stylized back to Peter. “You didn’t notice?”
“Sure,” said Peter, “but I thought—I figured whoever was sending those was using my symbols to, like, freak you out, I didn’t think it meant the card itself was about me.” He frowned. “If it’s about me, why send it to you?”
Johnny was silent for a minute, and then he said, “you said you had another piece of the puzzle.”
“Oh, right.” Peter rummaged in his backpack. “After Pete called me, I met up with my—” he hesitated. “Friend seems a little strong. But she’s the person I know who knows most about, like, future stuff. Fortune-telling. She gave me this.” He handed Johnny the card. “She said this one’s, like, the first one? The protagonist. I thought, until you explained, that we had the beginning and the end. But if Death’s not Death…”
Johnny had sat up and was frowning at the card. “She, what, just had this?”
Peter nodded. “She said she got it yesterday, and she was supposed to give it to me.”
“Who is she?” Johnny asked, still frowning. “Why did she have it? You said she’s not your friend, but are you. Like.”
It took Peter a second to figure out what he was asking. “What? No, like I said, I barely know her.”
“You don’t really have to, generally,” Johnny muttered, but he was frowning slightly less.
“Why would that matter, anyway?” Peter asked, puzzled.
Johnny waved a hand. “I’m just—trying to get all the info. If I’m right, and this is about you, we should know who around you is being drawn into it—”
“It’s not about me,” Peter insisted. “She told me so, she said solving this wouldn’t necessarily change anything for me but it would be better for you.” It wasn’t exactly what Julia said, but he figured she’d forgive him for simplifying.
Johnny blinked. “You talked to her about me?” he asked, and then, “hang on, she knows what’s going to happen and she didn’t tell you?”
Peter shrugged. “You know how it is. Future magic shit.”
Johnny sighed. “I hate magic,” he said grumpily. “Send me on a jaunt to space any time, it's just as weird but at least there are hot aliens and interesting new worlds and usually, like, dancing. It's fun. ”
“Any sufficiently advanced technology,” Peter quoted, and Johnny smacked him in the arm.
“Shut up,” he said, lips curling, “you sound like Reed.”
“I'll take that as a compliment.”
Johnny rolled his eyes, but he looked. Better. Less stressed. Less scared, which was a look rare enough on his face that it had taken Peter a while to even identify it, and he really preferred to never see it again. He leaned over to tousle his hair, to fully shift his expression into normal, flustered, annoyed-with-his-shit Johnny, and left his fingers curled at the nape of his neck, tucked between the collar of his jacket and his skin. It wasn’t the hug he’d wanted to give him earlier but it was still—something.
“So,” he said.
Johnny raised an eyebrow at him, not pushing him off or shifting away. His hair was mussed from Peter’s hand, a wild, golden tangle over one eye. “So?”
“We have two weird tarot cards with my spider on the back,” Peter recapped slowly, “one representing the beginning of something and the other representing—the middle, I guess, or the turn in some way, and no real idea where to go from here. So now...we wait?”
“Wait for what?” Johnny asked, his gaze shifting off Peter’s face.
Peter stared out across the the water at the bright lights of downtown Brooklyn. “The end, I guess.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
Peter could hear the grimace in Johnny’s voice, and he ran his thumb up and over the base of his skull. “No,” he said, “neither do I.”
+
The third card arrived the next day.
Whoever was sending them didn’t bother with the mail, or however Julia’s had arrived. The thing just popped into existence above his cereal bowl, and it was only his quick reflexes that kept it from being immediately drenched in milk.
This card depicted the same figure as the Fool, but they’d lost their motley, dressed now in a tattered cloth that was barely more than a veil. Their hands were raised, as if they were caught mid-fight, or maybe mid-dance— there’s usually dancing— and they were surrounded by a long, serpentine figure eating its own tail. There were four symbols in the four corners of the card, but he couldn’t really figure out what they were meant to represent.
It also—and he knew, vaguely, that this was important for how Tarot was read—appeared upside-down.
“It means it should be read as the opposite of what it would be normally read as,” Johnny said, “I think.”
They were in his room at the Baxter Building, about an hour after the card had appeared—just enough time for Peter to finish his cereal, shower off the last five day’s worth of sweat, and swing across town.
“Which would be helpful,” Johnny continued, “if we knew which card it is.” He was sitting cross-legged on his bedroom floor, his hands loose on his knees, the card on the carpet in front of him. He looked like he’d maybe actually slept last night, comfortable in a t-shirt and jeans. There was something that itched about that, something odd—not unfamiliar, because it happened not infrequently, but perpetually odd—about being in Johnny’s bedroom in full Spider-Man gear when Johnny was so dressed down.
“It’s the World, I’m pretty sure,” said Peter, tugging his mind back to the matter at hand. “The ouroboros, the thing around the edge, it symbolizes constant regeneration, right, death and rebirth, the end and the renewal of the cycle.” At Johnny’s look, he shrugged. “I did some googling.”
“So it is the end,” Johnny said. “You have the other two?”
Peter nodded, pulling them out of his backpack, and handed them to Johnny. “It’s a pretty hopeful end,” he said, “especially compared to the symbolism of the middle. I was expecting, I don’t know, lightning strikes or something, not rebirth.”
“Maybe we’re looking at this wrong, maybe it’s not actually malicious, but someone trying to contact us about something.” Johnny lay the cards out in a triangle in front of him. “Then again, it was reversed, right? So what’s the opposite of rebirth?”
Peter frowned. “Good question. Stagnancy, maybe? Like, if the ouroboros is perpetual motion, maybe the opposite would just be not ever moving—”
It happened very, very fast. He wasn’t even watching as Johnny laid down the final card—why would he be?—but he looked over when they started glowing, and then the carpet between them flashed a strange, milky white, and then Johnny was gone.
“—forward,” Peter finished, and then his mouth caught up with his eyes. Johnny was gone. Johnny was gone, and the portal, small to begin with, was rapidly closing.
He spat a curse and threw himself bodily through it after him.